Dirty Detergents?

Clumsy or not, the word that describes the fate of countless U.S. lakes and rivers is eutrophication: "the process of becoming richer in dissolved nutrients." In this case, wealth often equals death.

The trouble is that both natural and man-made nutrients (phosphates, nitrate, carbon, iron, calcium) are ending up in bodies of water where they fertilize prodigious growths of algae. As the algae decompose, they use up enormous quantities of oxygen. Fish die; the water looks and tastes so bad that other chemicals have to be added to make even potable water palatable for human use. Finally, a lake turns into a swamp or bog and slowly "dies."

Eutrophication is partly a natural process, but man's contribution is accelerating it out of control. Congressman Henry Reuss, a Wisconsin Democrat, singles out one offender. At last week's hearings of the House Subcommittee on Conservation and Natural Resources, he charged that the $1.2 billion detergent industry is largely responsible for the damage.

About five billion pounds of detergents are now being used annually, said Reuss. On the average, each pound contains about 40% phosphate, which does a fine job of cleaning dishes and clothes. But once flushed down the drain, it begins its environmental dirty work. Reuss has introduced a bill that would ban the manufacture and importation of detergents containing phosphate after June 30, 1971.

In fact, no one yet knows precisely how much phosphate detergents contribute to the death of lakes. Charles G. Bueltman, vice president of the Soap and Detergent Association, testified last week that "phosphates in surface waters come from many sources, such as fertilizers, runoff from uncultivated lands and forests, human excrement, detergents and industrial wastes." Bueltman claimed that "the elimination of detergent phosphate alone could not mitigate or diminish excessive algae growth." If .detergents were banned, he hinted, housewives would revolt.

Tertiary Trouble. In the early 1960s, after one detergent ingredient had been found to foam as readily on rivers and lakes as in Laundromats, the industry converted to another chemical. Right now it is searching for an alternative to phosphates. One possibility is a chemical called NTA which can replace a significant portion of the phosphates in a box of detergent. Even so, some experts agree that the only true solution is the construction of "tertiary" treatment sewage plants that would reduce phosphates from all sources to harmless ash.

Dr. Ibrahim A. Eldib, a water-pollution expert from Newark, disagrees. For one thing, he told the subcommittee, such plants are exorbitantly expensive. The best solution, says Eldib, is to speed the development of a phosphate-and nitrogen-free chemical detergent.

What the hearings mainly proved was that U.S. industry too often fails to foresee how its wonder products may affect all nature. Does this process have to continue? Last week the Reuss committee heard one answer from a Swedish pollution expert who described legislation being considered by his government to restrict all chemicals that might contaminate the environment. Officials of the U.S. Department of the Interior are now considering a similar plan.

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